


empty spaces

by creabimus



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-12 22:36:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13557042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creabimus/pseuds/creabimus
Summary: Fjord teaches Caleb to navigate using the stars.





	empty spaces

Caleb sleeps easily.

As a child, he drifted off to the ambience of the rain against the roof. He curled in the few quiet corners of his childhood home and, with a book splayed open in his lap, fell asleep in the middle of a sentence. His mother took to cutting his hair to the edge of his scalp to retaliate for the knots, but otherwise relented against fighting his narcoleptic tendencies as long as he finished cleaning the house and collecting eggs from the chicken coop. 

After learning magic and everything that went with it, Caleb poured himself into his life rather than the depths of his dreams. After meeting Nott, he traded his sleep for her own, and quickly grew into the habit of sleeping only when necessary. 

And of course books would, always, beckon him.

-

The fire’s light dwindles, dancing in the slow breeze and sending embers forth. The two moons dance around each other; an eternal sashay, two lovers only fingertips apart and yearning to touch. 

Nott, curled on her own bedding next to where Caleb sits, snores. Frumpkin readjusts himself atop her tangled hair then drifts off again. Caleb smiles. 

Across them, Beau curls her body around her staff, cradling the piece of wood like an infant, and Yasha sleeps with her back presses against the trunk of a tree and her knees to her chest. She’d appeared some days ago with the blessing of the wind. 

Molly sleeps on his side with his elbow propping up his head as if he fell asleep mid-conversation. Jester balls herself in the blankets she grabbed from the others as they slept. When faced with the prospect of Caleb’s own, she decided against saying it “smelled too much like him”. 

A slight ways away, Fjord stares up at the sky, his gaze unreadable, his hands resting on his chest and himself lying on his bedding roll. His skin glows in the moons’ light so he looks ethereal, like a phantom spirit come to ponder about the living one last time. Such a conjecture wouldn’t seem out of place. 

Caleb absentmindedly turns the pages of the book he cannot read.

As a boy, he drowned himself in the pages of his books. He woke up with crumpled parchment underneath his cheek and ink stains marking his nose and rimming his eyes. Perhaps now, as an adult, the years of sleep and wanderlust of his dreams were simply a way to prepare him for the sleepless years to come, whether watching over Nott as she slept away her turmoil or filling his mind with spells and lore and ancestry. 

But now, his fingers card through the pages. His eyes refuse to slip closed and instead opt to wander about the small area, tracing the edges of his companions, the grass, the trees, the horizon, the outlines of the stars. Warmth spreads from his heart onward. 

Perhaps this is the peace he’s been aching for. Perhaps this is the future he’s seen only in the edges of his various dreamscapes. Perhaps he is finally complete.

Hours must pass when he feels someone tap his shoulder. Caleb glances up from the pages, not really reading them but knowing the words as if they were imprinted in his mind all the same, and looks at Fjord’s face haloed by the moons’ glows. His eyes brim with something warm, something tangible but something that Caleb cannot grasp, and says, “It’s late.” 

“It is,” Caleb agrees. “It must be two in the morning,” he suggests as if neither of them know he’s aware of the exact time. 

Fjord nods. “Which means you should sleep.” His lips quirk upward. “We both should, no?” As if Caleb were guarding over everyone else because he needed permission to do anything else. 

“Not yet.” 

Throughout the whole exchange, Fjord keeps his hand on Caleb’s right shoulder. When he finally removes it, Caleb keenly feels the loss of its weight. His shoulder waits for the impending exchange of heat to no avail. Fjord squats beside Caleb, then sits down cross-legged beside his human companion. “You ever read about the stars in those books of yours?” he asks.

“Once or twice.”

Fjord smiles. “Good.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I’ve got something to teach you, then, if you’d like.”

Caleb raises an eyebrow. “The names of the stars?”

“Navigation, Caleb,” Fjord corrects. Although he doesn’t laugh, Caleb still imagines the sound rolling from his mouth like a clap of thunder. A powerful, wondrous thing brought with life. 

Fjord points with his index finger at the brightest star. “That’s Elna,” he says, and his voice is low when he talks. “She’s the one who always points north.” He pauses. “You see the shape around her? It’s angular, sharp.”

Caleb squints. He reads the movement of Fjord’s finger with his eyes but barely makes out the shape Fjord is - admittedly barely - describing. “No,” he admits. And this time, Fjord laughs. Low and quiet, not loud enough to wake the others. He pours himself into that quiet laugh; Caleb wants to drag the sound from Fjord again, and again, and again until he can hear it in his dreams. Like an echo. 

“I apologize, I, uh, don’t explain this kind of thing well. It’s instinctive to me.”

“Because you were a sailor?” Caleb faces Fjord who now looks at him. “What of your sextents?” 

Fjord’s cheeks color. If Caleb knew him better, he would say Fjord was embarrassed. “Sometimes people lose them.” Before Caleb can speak, he adds, “Not myself.” 

Caleb smiles. “Not yourself,” he agrees. “It would’ve been a useful thing to know,” he acknowledges. “Especially for one on the sea.” Caleb shudders at the thought of constantly being surrounded by churning waves; he admires Fjord’s ability to sail for however long he did, and he admires more how this skill stuck with him. 

“You never know what might happen.” Fjord turns his attention back to the night sky. “It’s best to be prepared for the worst.”

Indeed. 

“Well,” Caleb prompts, “go on.”

Fjord clears his throat. “Elna’s part of S’enet. You have stories of her?” 

Caleb shakes his head. “No. I didn’t grow up learning the names of the stars, and unlike you I never had an occupation which called for it.” Now he regrets not knowing. He and Nott could’ve gone so much further if he knew more than his base knowledge of the cardinal directions. The stars, he’s heard, could even amplify one’s magical capabilities. 

Fjord hums. “I grew up hearing how she was a human who fell in love with a goddess who scattered her essence into the sky to immortalized her. The goddess couldn’t bear to be apart from her lover, so she brought her up to the aether so the two could live together.”

“Did S’enet die before the goddess did this?”

“I don’t know,” Fjord admits. “I suppose it depends on your interpretation. I prefer to think the goddess elevated S’enet into the sky before she could die, because when you die you can’t really come back, can you?”

Caleb wants to say that, technically, you can, but decides not to compete with him. “That’s a more pleasant thought.”

Fjord re-extends his finger. “To the right of her, that octogonal shape with lines point up off it, is the goddess. The two are together every night in the end.”

“She doesn’t have name?”

“The human was always more important,” Fjord replies. “She caught the attention of a goddess who fell in love with her, and she managed to become immortal herself. I think that speaks to our own capabilities.” 

Caleb’s eyes wide, and when he smiles and his surprise fades, his eyes crinkle at the edges. Of course Fjord would be such a romantic at heart. He can almost imagine a younger Fjord, leaning on his elbows on the desk of a ship and staring out in the swallowing sea, thinking about the love story of a mortal and a goddess. 

When Fjord looks back at Caleb, he holds Caleb’s gaze. Fjord’s eyes glow in the night, his dark lashes frame his eyes, and the scars on his face map the beginning of his only legend on his skin. Decades from now, when the lot of them are dust, perhaps someone will immortalize Fjord by scattering his likeness into the night sky. 

Caleb captures the yawn in his hand, but Fjord still catches it. “You should sleep,” he says. “I’ll teach you more tomorrow night if you’d like.”

“I would,” Caleb says. He looks over at his sleeping companions, at the impression of their future he desperately wants to see, and feels a wave of peace wash over him. “You should sleep, too.” 

“In a bit.” Fjord looks up at the sky. “I’ve still got a few constellations to look for.” He pauses. “I’ll keep them all safe, Caleb. I promise.” As if there was any ever doubt, Caleb wants to say.

Instead, he says, “Thank you,” and when he finally finds himself drifting off to sleep, he watches as the mortal and the goddess meet each other for the first time.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @ iugias


End file.
